Instant Translate

24 Apr 2018

From South China Morning Post Jan 2018Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest internet company by market value, is on a collision course with Apple and Alphabet with its aggressive push into mini mobile applications, which allow users to bypass traditional app stores and run programs directly within its WeChat application.

Tencent has re-engineered the WeChat messaging app in a way that applications smaller than 10 megabytes can run instantly on WeChat’s interface. It is now offering 580,000 mini programs after just one year of development, compared to the 500,000 mobile apps that Apple’s App Store published from 2008 to 2012, according to Hu Renjie, WeChat’s mini program director.

“The mini program is a brand new product model which can seamlessly link the offline and the online together,” said Hu, adding that the mini program scheme has attracted 1 million developers.

As well as bypassing the need for app stores, mini programs offer speed of access to users because they can be loaded instantly from within WeChat on any operating system.

Tencent’s move to bundle apps within WeChat could hurt Apple and Alphabet as the two US tech giants rely on their own universe of apps to enrich the use of their respective iOS and Android systems.

In a measure of the size of the threat that mini programs present, WeChat already has a user base of 1 billion globally as at January 2018, which is larger than the population of the European Union and Russia combined.

One mini program, the Jump Jump mobile game, attracted 400 million players in China in less than three days after becoming available on WeChat’s homepage, making it the most popular mobile game in the country.

Tencent recently announced that it had more than 170 million monthly users of its mini programs since their launch in January 2017. A number of international brands, including McDonald’s, KFC, Coach and carmaker Tesla, released mini programs for WeChat in the past year, with a Tesla one allowing users to monitor the acceleration rate of their vehicle.

19 Apr 2018

It has become very common nowadays to read flyers and hear people saying, "Now you can enter the vast 1.4 billion Chinese market using WeChat". In fact many trainers, myself included in the past, have told the whole world that if you too want to enter the market of China and Chinese, you have to use WeChat. It seems very logical to use the bait of huge Chinese market to attract people to use WeChat. Is this true? In my earlier article (you can read it at here), I wrote that if the only reason for you to use WeChat is to enter the market of China and Chinese, you better don't use Wechat. This is because your monetary and selfish reason will soon be detected by the Chinese and they will detest you, not like you.It is like the Chinese saying that they want to enter the US market and so they start using Facebook and Whatsapp. But we know that the Americans don't want people to use these tools to try to sell to them, Americans want the Chinese to use these US tools so as to better connect with them, befriend them, and start exchanging with them. So I stand firm and tall to say categorically that you cannot use WeChat to enter the Chinese market. If you want to sell to the Chinese, you must first know how to behave so that the Chinese will like you, connect with you and respect you. To me, the one and only reason for you to use WeChat is to go back to your roots. Now you may say, I am not a Chinese, what roots are you talking about? I am talking about going back to your roots as a human. Because I truly believe that the Chinese culture is about humanity and about behaving in harmonious ways, and not about just doing things the 'Chinese' way like giving out red packets, wearing Chinese costumes and writing in poetic ways. What do you think? Share me your thougts!

15 Apr 2018

If your business derives 80% of its sales from WeChat, you are called a Wechatpreneur (微商), also called Technopreneur or Mumpreneur (if you are a stay-at-home-mum). There are 8 ways that you can be a Wechatpreneur at ZERO COST:

Moments (朋友圈). If you have more than 2,000 friends on WeChat, your Moments posts (if they are interesting and not just plain advertisements) will start generating comments and likes. You post 3 to 5 Moments a day and people contact you via comments, or in the links or other contacts that you provide in the Moments posts

Groupchats (群聊). You form groupchats by gathering people who have shown interest in what you do. Your groupchats are very active with mini leaders and fans who support your Groupchat posts. Every day you are adding new people to the groupchats. You are also forming new groupchats every day, some of which are sub-groups. By far Groupchats is the most common and effective to sell on WeChat FOC.

Message Broadcasts (群发）You can send out to maximum 200 contacts in each message broadcast

Messaging (消息). Here you message people directly. Each message can also be a video not exceeding 5 minutes or voice maximum 60 seconds. This must be the most basic and yet effective methods to sell on WeChat.

Mei Pian (美篇). Mei Pian is a mini program (小程序) that looks like a website. Here you can include words, pictures, videos, music and even tabs for sub-pages. You promote your Mei Pian via Moments, Groupchats, Message Broadcast and Messaging. After scanning your Mei Pian QR code, people will go inside your Mei Pian.

Official Account (公众号) Official accounts are mini-websites with up to 15 pages. When people follow your official accounts, you can send them a broadcast each day with maximum 8 articles in that broadcast. You can set up maximum 5 Official Accounts with your business registration. There is ZERO cost in setting up official accounts. ff Official

Mini Program (小程序) Mini programs are mobile apps inside WeChat. People are very familiar with doing business on mobile apps. You can easily promote your mini programs via Moments, Groupchats, Message Broadcast and Messaging.

Groupbuy (吃喝玩乐) Here you go into 大众点评 and put your products and services there FOC. People can access Groupbuy inside their WeChat Wallet page.

Written by Andy Ng, a Trainer with over 17 years experience. From August 2017 to April 2018, Andy has conducted over 48 runs of WeChat training in English. For the next WeChat training, message Andy at 65-8201-4347 or visit www.asiatrainers.com